


No Instructions For Assembly

by harcourt



Category: DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:40:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6106765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy's supposed to be dead. Instead, he's got a rent-free apartment--of sorts--and company.</p><p>The change of plan is a little disconcerting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Instructions For Assembly

There's only one step in the Waylon Jones sobriety program; stay clean or I kick your ass. Not 'kick you out' though, and it's kind of hilarious that two hours into their acquaintance and a guy called Killer Croc with a rap sheet as long as Roy's arm and who hangs out in a sewer, had done a better job of sticking by him than Ollie could be bothered with.

The mattress in the corner of the cluttered little room is lumpy and deflated. Sort of draped over a base of plastic crates, keeping it off the damp floor, but at the cost of making it an even more uneven surface. It's sagging a bit into the gaps, and Roy can tell the corners of those crates are going to be as uncomfortable as hell. Sleeping on that thing looks like it's going to be murder. Still, it's a bed. Not too long ago, that wouldn't have been a big deal, but now it's practically a luxury, and as soon as Croc finishes patching him up, Roy moves to give it a test run, flopping carefully out of consideration for his injuries and the hard edges just beneath the thin layer of padding.

Not offering a comment, even though he normally would. It feels like Ollie's knocked all the humor and snip out of him, and mostly Roy feels tired and wrung out and empty. His head is pounding a bit, in a way that means a nasty hangover later. He'd really like a drink. Just enough to kick the misery a bit further down the road. Just to put it off for another hour. Maybe two.

He doesn't say that. Doesn't do anything but roll onto his back and consider the dark metal sheets of the ceiling and breathe, but Croc reads his mind anyway. It's not that hard a read, really. What the hell else would Roy be thinking about, on the back end of getting smashed off his face and attempting to get himself iced? 

"I wouldn't drink the tap water," Croc--Waylon--tells him, in a firm way that means _don't even think about drinking anything_ but _water_.

"There's taps?" That work, even? That's cool.

Waylon ignores it. "But there's bottled in one of the crates under the bed. It should be enough to hold you a couple days."

There's a mini fridge too. Not plugged in, and maybe not functioning, but Roy can fix that no problem. Can upgrade the lighting to something he can actually work by, and probably even figure out how to get a TV working. "Neat," he says, wondering if there's any tools in the clutter and junk strewn around the place. His head is swimming too much for him to start forming any real plan. He does work out one thing, though. "You're going, huh?"

"About three minutes ago, you thought I was a killer," Waylon points out.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't've held it against you."

It's kind of a joke. Waylon doesn't laugh, standing there silent and hulking. Roy can tell even without looking, mostly from the way his shadow stops moving against the walls and the room gets a bit oppressive with him blocking out the light from the hall. The tunnel, maybe. Roy's still not that sure where the fuck they are. The trip over is mostly a seasick blur, and fractured.

"I'll check up on you." Waylon says, after a few minutes, still not moving. "Be here."

"You gonna search the place, too?" Roy asks, tilting his head up to examine the wall and to not look at Waylon. Focusing hard on where his fingers are tracing the uneven edge of a piece metal sheeting, picking at small spots of corrosion with his nail.

"If I need to." There's a question in it. Barely, but there. A warning too, that says Waylon's willing to do it, but probably not that many times. That he's willing to be the police and the executor of consequence, but that _stay on the program_ means _on board and committed and willing_. Waylon's might be okay with booting him along a little, but he's not going to drag him kicking and screaming and hiding booze under his bed then lying about it.

"That's fair," Roy says, to whole unspoken thing, still not looking at him, but at the bandages around his arm, hands still pressed to the wall, but unmoving.

"Maybe wait till you sober up," Waylon suggests. "I can hear the gears grinding from here."

"I don't understand why you're doing this."

Waylon grunts.

"Ollie--"

"Do I _look_ like Oliver Queen?"

Roy pushes himself up to his elbows to consider it, seriously enough that Waylon makes a low harsh sound that could be a laugh. It's hard to read his face, with the ridges and reptilian stiffness and the way his teeth protrude, alternating. Like a zipper, Roy thinks. He's not sure how Waylon forms words with the lack of real lips and the way his mouth opens way back almost to the hinge.

"No," Roy says. "Guess not." 

This time the sound Waylon makes is definitely a laugh. A harsh, in-the-throat noise that's somehow easy to decode. The upturn of his mouth makes him look like he's grinning, all the time. Roy'd grin back, but he can't really find it in him.

"Ollie could've--" he starts anyway, even though Waylon had clearly meant for him to shut up about Oliver. "You know, it wouldn't even have cost him anything to let me--"

Waylon sighs. Roy flops back down onto his back, arms flung out, looking at the ceiling again. He should paint it. A lighter color would probably help with the brightness issue. Bounce some light around the place. "If _you_ ," he goes on, then stalls and picks up with, "I mean--this place--Oliver just--" His throat hurts. He's not sure if he wants to cry or if he's just furious, the way he has been ever since Oliver had run him out and taken back everything that he'd ever given Roy.

He'd kept the designs, though. And the prototypes. And every scrap of copyright. And Roy, Roy like an idiot had wanted to be his _sidekick_. Like Robin. Had worried about him and looked up to him and idolized him and saved his ass a couple times, through invention if not successful tagging along. He can't fit any of it into a sentence he can manage to complete, just in broken starts and stops, going nowhere.

"Roy," Waylon says, low. Gentle for no reason, and also for no reason, it makes Roy furious.

"Why didn't you kill me?" It's louder than he means it to come out. Harsher. A demand, and halfway to a sob, if the way it chokes out of his throat is any indication.

"Because you're pathetic," Waylon tells him, not meanly, but mean enough. Sharp, like he's offended at the question. "I don't make it my business to smack around drunk homeless kids."

"Well, when you say it like that," Roy allows, still angry, then adds, "I wasn't. Before." Homeless, he means. Drunk, he'd been, at least a little practically all of the time. Pathetic was debatable. Oliver had probably thought that. Oliver had probably--

Oliver could have done this--what Waylon's doing--a hundred times over. Definitely, he could have kicked Roy's ass instead of providing snide commentary than taking him to a yacht party anyway.

He must have said at least some of it out loud, because Waylon says, "Knock it off. Oliver Queen didn't put the bottle in your hand."

"Sometimes," Roy says. "At the beginning. When I was still shiny and new and a fucking idiot."

"You're still an idiot, it looks like." 

He expects Waylon to leave after dropping the remark, but instead Waylon moves back into the room making his shadow waver and stretch as he takes a seat on something. A crate maybe. Roy's pretty sure he remembers there being crates. The squeak against the metal floor sounds kind of wooden.

"I thought he wanted a sidekick or a partner or something," Roy says, and laughs, rolling onto his side to face the wall and hunching his shoulders up. "I thought he wanted _me_."

Waylon takes a long breath and lets it out, but he doesn't sound that annoyed, even though Roy doesn't have great filters at the best of times, and even less when he's this smashed. "Sorry," he tells Waylon, apologizing for the ramble, and the drunkenness that's causing the ramble. "I thought it would be easier. One time I fell down the stairs and didn't even feel it until--I thought it would be easier."

"Great," Waylon says, but not really to Roy. "Guess I'm staying, then." It takes way too long for Roy to catch up to that.

"Oh. No. I don't--I'm not going to do anything stupid."

"You already did." It's a grunt. Waylon sounds like he's settling in, shifting around to get comfortable, tough spines scraping on the wall and crate dragging loudly as he repositions it. The whole production makes Roy roll back over and sit up, all the way this time, leaning back on his arms as he watches Waylon roll his shoulders and cross his arms over his chest and fussily adjust his back against the wall.

"Are you--really?" Roy asks.

"Sure. For a bit. Just in case. I hate body disposal."

Roy huffs, and drops back to his elbows. Looks away from Waylon, then back, and then away again. "Are you kidding me? No one ever--You don't have to stay."

"I don't _have to_ do lots of things."

It's meant to be an end to the conversation. There's a note of finality in it that Roy's heard before, in any number of conversations with Oliver Queen, but without the dismissal. Of course without the dismissal, Roy thinks, with a snort. He's got nowhere to be dismissed _to_.

"I--" he starts.

"Sleep it off," Waylon tells him. "I don't need to hear your life story. Or any more of it, anyway."

"I'm sorry I thought you were a murderer. Or I mean, I'm sorry I thought you were a murderer without _standards_." _I'm sorry I didn't meet the standard_ , Roy doesn't say, because he's not really sure how he feels about that anymore. Between the time that's passed since he'd made the decision to kill himself by villain, and the alcohol leaving his system, he's mostly just numb. He hadn't really considered anything existing _after_ and isn't sure what to do with it. It all feels a bit unreal. 

Beyond Killer Croc taking him in like a stray and sitting up with him levels of unreal.

"Ollie got me out of prison," Roy shares. Overshares. His whole night has been an extended overshare, but he can't make any sense of what's happened. Not just tonight, but maybe starting from the point Oliver had posted his bail onwards. 

Except for the part where Oliver's a fucking asshole. That part he'd worked out ages ago. _That_ part's clear as fucking day.

"I'm not Oliver," Waylon says, low. Not really engaging. Letting Roy drunk talk himself to sleep. That's cool. Roy's done that before, and with an audience it's a lot less crazy looking than talking to himself until he winds up angrier and angrier and more miserable, or passes out. Waylon's presence and kind of grouchy calm is keeping him from getting too far onto that track, keeping him on the vaguely disjointed conversations track instead. It's sort of nice, in a way that'll probably be mortifying when he's less plastered, to have someone listen.

"I was in trouble then, too. Oliver--I thought--Oliver just wanted weapons. I thought he wanted to--" _Keep me_ , sounds wrong. A little too Orphan Annie or something. Roy crunches his face up but can't come up with a better reference or a better end to the sentence, and lets it trail off. At some point, he'd dropped flat on his back again, and is talking mostly to the ceiling, tracking Waylon just out of the corner of one eye and only in an unfocused, half-assed way. It would be weird to get all cautious about him now, considering. "Keep me," Roy finishes belatedly, and laughs.

"I'm throwing you out too," Waylon says. "Just so you know in advance."

"Yeah?"

"Eventually. You can't live in a sewer forever."

"You do."

There's no answer. Then Waylon says, "Sure," in a low voice, and after a second adds, "But you don't shut up and you're getting on my nerves already."

"So I just can't live in _your_ sewer forever."

Waylon doesn't answer, and Roy doesn't say anything else, in case he ends up talking about Oliver again, and lets himself start to drift, still woozy from the booze but not in a way that's at all pleasant anymore. After what feels like a long time, he hears the crate move again and Waylon rummage around for the water he'd mentioned earlier, before he tosses a couple plastic bottles onto the bed, close enough to almost hit Roy. They bounce a bit, even though the mattress has no spring to speak of, then roll before coming to settle against his side, cool through his thin shirt.

Roy grunts acknowledgement and fumbles for the bottles, but once he gets a grip on one, just lies still and holds it, free arm tossed over his face because even the dim lighting is starting to make his head pound. Somewhere, a ventilation system must be at least semi-functional, because there's a muted, grinding squeak coming from somewhere inside the wall. A fan that needs oiling or maintenance. He's not sure they really are in a sewer. 

"You're not the first one to ever be thrown away," Waylon says, eventually, from somewhere by the door, low and pitched in a way that means he thinks Roy's asleep. The door scrapes as it moves, then stops, like Waylon wants to say something else. Then he changes his mind, says, "Be alive when I come back," like it's an order, and there's a scrape, a soft thump, then silence. Roy considers throwing up. Once he's done that, he considers being alive when Waylon comes back and what the hell he's supposed to do with that.

Other than get the mini fridge working and a television signal. But after that. He hasn't thought longer term than the next drink and a dry place to pass out in for a while, and now he's got one of those and the other is off the table, and that leaves a lot of room for thinking.

"Be alive, fix the fridge," Roy mumbles to himself, only barely out loud. "Gonna need tools. Hangover first."

It's a plan.


End file.
